Japan to fight global warming, oil prices: replacing gas cars with ethanol ones

Japan plans to fight global warming and surging oil prices by requiring all vehicles to run on an environment-friendly mix of ethanol or other biofuels by 2030, an official said Thursday.

The new policy, adopted by the Environment Ministry this month, will require all new cars to be able to run on a blend of 10 percent ethanol, an alcohol fuel made from corn or sugar, and 90 percent regular gasoline, starting in 2010, said Takeshi Sekiya, an official at the ministry’s global warming division. Costs and implementation are still being studied.
Japan currently allows ethanol mixtures of up to 3 percent at the nation’s pumps, but in practice “almost no cars” run on the fuel, Sekiya said. To encourage the market, the ministry will ramp up production of ethanol fuel on the southern island of Miyako, where a plentiful supply of sugar cane will be converted into fuel for the island’s estimated 20,000 cars in the next three years.

The goal is to have all cars on the nation’s roads capable of running on the new fuel by 2030.

Mainichi-MSN